Found out that the Cedar Rapids library has a digital archive of ALL Cedar Rapids newspapers from 1857-1977, plus all of the city directories through 1995, plus more resources up to date through 1998 and it’s all FREE and all available ONLINE! WITH a search engine! For anyone doing any family history research, what a goldmine! I’ve been finding obituaries and articles about a lot of my family - many of whom live in Cedar County, NOT Linn County (where Cedar Rapids is). So, for anyone interested, be sure you check this out Cedar Rapids Digital Archive

On a similar note, I’ve been making great progress lately, thanks to actually having a plan and using a research map.  Have made a ton of connections and found lost people through the census records, because I actually started keeping track of where I was looking and for who.  Spent one whole day in May researching cemeteries in IA and another in July researching cemeteries in IL.  Too much fun! Have found people that I didn’t know had migrated where and when they did, which has led to more census and newspaper research.  Can’t wait to take the new baby to his/her first cemetery expedition!

OK, I’m a dork and I know it. But I cannot wait for this next installment.

OK, normally I hate sports. All sports. Why have sports? But I LOVE the Olympics!  From the opening to the closing ceremonies, I love the Olympics.  This Olympics’ opening ceremonies were really beautiful this year.  And so far I’ve been able to watch Mike Phelps win one gold, plus a bunch of other qualifying heats for gymnastics, swimming, basketball, sculls, fencing, etc etc. I LOVE THE OLYMPICS!

My mom was finally able to get back to work last week. The water is receding, but the clean-up is a mess! Mud everywhere.  Some bridges were being opened in Iowa City last week, but there are still traffic situations with closed streets and bridges.

…I’ve been thinking about starting a new ministry at church. And I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, but I’m still trying to put the pieces together.

I want to start a group that makes items for babies in the NICU at area hospitals and for families who can’t afford items.  These would especially be things like preemie hats and layettes and blankets, but also some for newborn sizes.  Even isolator covers and positioners. And unfortunately, even burial items for those little ones.  And then I want to take it a step further and buy disposable cameras to give to those parents with babies in NICU and to buy teddy bears for those mothers to take home.  Your arms feel so empty when you have to go home.

And lastly, I want to do something I don’t know if anyone has done: I want to buy teddy bears to give to doctor’s offices, so they can give them to their patients who have lost a child to miscarriage, ectopic or molar pregnancy.  It’s such a dark, empty time and no one seems to recognize your status as a mother.  It helps when you just want to hold on to something and cry and to know someone understands.  And in those cases, there’s almost never something to take home.  Just that empty feeling.

Well, I’ve found patterns and I have the idea. But now I need to talk to Pastor at church and see if people would be interested in joining me or in donating items/money.  And I need to find contacts at area hospitals… Geez, I have a lot to do yet.

The Sutliff Bridge is gone. I cannot believe it, but the eastern portion of the Sutliff Bridge washed away and the other 2 sections are under almost 2 feet of water.  Go to Kcrg.com and do a search for “sutliff bridge” to find pictures. It’s unbelievable.

The Coralville Reservoir crested during the night at 717 feet, lower than projected.  But the outflor is still very high and while the IOwa River is projected to crest lower than they thought, it will still be higher than currently.

The University abandoned its Arts Campus (Hancher Auditorium, etc.) in favor of trying to save the power plant.  19 buildings are flooded, including 2 dorms.

The Coralville strip was under 5 feet of water yesterday and all road service between East and West Iowa City was being restricted to one bridge.  Residents were being told to stay on their side of the city.

The University told all non-patient care employees to stay home.  And for staff involved in patient care at the hospital, if you were stranded with no way to get in (roads closed, etc.) they were willing to bring you in by helicopter AirCare or a National Guard blackhawk helicopter.

For complete information and some amazing pictures, go to:

www.press-citizen.com  and www.kcrg.com (KCRG in downtown Cedar Rapids is still streaming live 24 hours on their website and are running on generators.  It’s a testament to their determination to get the news out. They’re operating on no teleprompters, very low light conditions, basically handing a camera to anyone who can hold one to go out and get footage and bring it back).

PLEASE - the national news is not covering Iowa City/Coralville (as of yet anyway), so if you want to see any of this, you must go to these local websites.

As so many people have asked me how my parents are doing with the flooding that is happening in Iowa, I thought I’d add something here. Prayers are welcome!

Where my parents’ house is located is high enough and far enough from the river that they’re ok.  But their paths to/from Iowa City/Coralville may soon be cut off (or at the very least restricted immensely).  So, t hey are not in danger of evacuation, but people they work with or people we know may be.

Iowa City/Coralville:

The city held a special council meeting to establish rules for evacuation. They’ve never had to have this before!  At this time, some areas of IC and Coralville are being evacuated (Bill & Cindy- the area we saw under water this last weekend has a mandatory evacuation now for those residents).  But more evacuations are threatened. For more information on that, click here:

Conditions will worsen, more evacuations to come

Dubuque Street, one of the main accesses into downtown IC and to the University campus has been closed and the water is so high you cannot even see the median. City park has been closed. Water is in Mayflower Hall, as well as North Hall. Hancher Auditorium and the Schools of Art & Music have been vacated by faculty. 1st Avenue in Coralville (one of the main arteries to Coralville from I-80. The other is the mall exit) is closed.

River, reservoir continue to rise; no end in sight

My mother this morning, at one point, drove through over a foot of water to get to her office. She told me by email she’ll need to find another way home tonight, because they’ll have the road closed by then. (This was Iowa Avenue)

Parkview Church, think Willow Creek but smaller, had been using what was left of their parking lot as a base for sandbagging operations. The water is now 1/2 foot up the wall around the church and the parking lot is gone. They’ve moved their church offices to the east side of town and another church is hosting the rest of their VBS this week. Weekend services are being held in West High School until further notice.

Not much left over water at Parkview Church

East of Iowa City:
I-80 will be closed tonight just east of West Branch (my hometown). The 2-lane highways around the closure have been closed since Tuesday. Rochester (little village) is sandbagging around their church, hoping to be able to use it as a shelter for displaced residents. In ‘93 the water never reached that high, but this year they’re not sure. My parents’ church just about 5 miles west of Rochester has offered their building, if needed.
If we were going home this weekend, we’d have to detour!
UPDATE: Residents of Rochester have just been asked to evacuate IMMEDIATELY.
Update to I80 closure

Cedar Rapids (about 25 miles North of IC):
The entire downtown area of Cedar Rapids is flooded and without power. Residents of several neighborhoods have been evacuated, with more to come. KRNA and KHAK, 2 radio stations located downtown, are off the air due to the power loss. Local ABC and CBS affiliates will most likely be forced to leave their buildings downtown soon as well. 4 main bridges into the downtown area are under water and this morning a railroad bridge collapsed. Internet service will soon be lost to most of Eastern Iowa due to flooding of the Qwest utility building downtown.

University of Iowa Hospitals in Iowa City is also preparing for an influx of patients from Cedar Rapids, because both St Luke’s and Mercy Hospitals there may need to evacuate patients because they have no power.

I-380 west of Coralville has not closed yet. Another 2 feet though and it will as well.

For complete information, see the Iowa City Press-Citizen website: as well as the local-ABC affilliate KCRG TV 9 website

Prayers are the best we can give when we’re so far away. REmember all of those in this area, in NE Iowa (WAterloo and Cedar Falls are also experiencing evacuations), western Iowa (the Scouts who lost their lives) among those still affected by the tornadoes in the area (IC is under a Tornado watch tonight again).

Not in the mood to argue. Post has been edited and removed.

What an amazing weekend.  The Vietnam Travelling Wall came to Schaumburg this Memorial Day Weekend. Jason has been part of the planning committee for the last three years and I knew the whole weekend would be taken up being part of it.

I had volunteered for a 3-hour shift early Saturday morning to be on Computers as part of the Name Locators, locating names for visitors; telling them where on the wall they could find the name of their friend, family member, loved ones.  We had a computer database, as well as a directory of the 58,000+ names on the 80% replica wall.  We also had a directory for a tribute created to the soldiers who gave their lives in Desert Storm, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc since Vietnam.

I had intended on serving my 3-hour shift and then going home.  Jason would be there from beginning to end all 4 days that the Wall was there.  And by “beginning to end” I mean 7am to 8/9pm.  But that Saturday, I found myself too involved, too intrigued to leave.  I was helping people.  Some would come in with lists of classmates, friends, or of guys they had served with while they were in Vietnam.  They wouldn’t know if they were on the wall or not and it made me feel good to not find those names. It meant that they at least had left the Combat Zone alive, if they had been in Vietnam.

One gentleman had his list of 5 or 6 names.  Guys he had served with.  As we made our way through the list, one name was located on the wall.  His eyes filled with tears and he couldn’t even go any further. He simply turned around and left, sobbing.

The database would pull up also how a particular soldier was killed. You didn’t want to, but your eyes would go to that almost automatically: “Explosive Device” “Air-Crash” “Drowned” there were so many different listings.  We also had a book that listed all of the POW/MIAs for Vietnam. The book described the date they went missing/were captured; if they were found; date body was identified; date they were released; any specific/comments.

One gentleman had me print a list of all the Marines killed on March 13-15, 1969.  He had been in battle on that day with them and wanted to preserve all of their names with rubbings.  He had initially asked about just the 14th.  But after discussing it with me and Dennis, a veteran who travels with the wall, he printed the day before and after as well.

Dennis had served in Vietnam in 1969-1970, if I remember correctly, as a combat medic with the 1st Cavalry.  He had been wounded, which I only knew because of the Purple Heart pin on his hat.  He talked about how a soldier may have been wounded in battle, then flown to Japan or the Philipinnes for treatment.  If he had died from his wounds then, he wouldn’t appear on the Wall, because he had died outside of the Combat Zone.  He talked about how as a medic there were times that he had a handful of dogtags of soldiers who had died; soldiers he had to fill out the paperwork for, etc. So many that he wouldn’t always remember the exact date a particular soldier had died, because there had been so many over a short period of time.  I learned a lot from Dennis in the few days I was with him.  He sat right beside us creating custom dog tags for people.  I shared my respect for anyone who has served with him.  He also had a wonderful sense of humor and we enjoyed teasing each other all 3 days.

People would come in with metallic bracelets.  During Vietnam they would sell these.  The names engraved on them were of soldiers who were POW or MIA.  People would ask about these names.  Many, unfortunately, were on the Wall: their bodies had been recovered or they were still missing.  I had a few, however, that we couldnt’ find in the Wall’s database.  After racking my brain on variant spellings or searching by hometown, I would pull out the POW/MIA book and discover that the soldier had been released. He had made it out of the country alive.  What a glorious feeling that was to see a Release date in his information.  He had lived to make it home to his family.  The AVTT group was selling these bracelets still; some were still for soldiers MIA in Vietnam and some were POW/MIA from Iraq.  They are not forgotten.

One veteran came to me looking for the location of the gold dog tag made for a Sergeant killed in Iraq. I located it and told him where he should be able to find it.  I can still remember the name: R. Napper killed in 2006.  About 20 minutes later the veteran came back saying he couldn’t find Napper’s name.  I advised him that I was sure it was there, but I would try to go down and look myself.  He had to leave, unfortunately. I advised that the tribute would be open all night, if he wanted to come back and look again himself.  I never was able to make it back onto the field.  I hope that  he was able to come back later in the evening.  The sacrifice of his friend has not been forgotten.

I spoke with a Legionnaire who said he felt guilty because during Korea he had been assigned a non-combat position and was never shipped overseas.  But he said, “I did what the government told me to do.” Which is all that any soldier can say.

A volunteer this weekend was working in honor of his grandfather killed in WWII and in honor of his father killed in Vietnam.  He adhered his father’s name from his fatigues to his volunteer shirt and wore his grandfather’s dog tags.

One veteran came straight from his 3rd shift job at the post office to spend 6 or 7 hours every morning to help others located loved ones on the Wall.

Then there was the woman who brought the “yearbook” of her son’s Marine group that served in Iraq to find information on her son’s best friend that had been killed.

So many stories and more like these. This is what kept me at the Flyers Stadium the entire weekend, working to help someone find closure, to find out what happened.  Saturday I stayed from 7;30am to 9:00pm.  Sunday, I stayed from 7:30am to 8:00pm.  Monday I stayed from 7:30am to 2:00pm, left for a few hours, returned at 6:00pm and stayed until 8:00pm (hey, laundry HAD to get done for the week!).

If I could retire 30 years early, I would travel with this group. The people met and the things I learned; volunteering was the least I could do to honor their service and those who sacrified all.

For information on where the Wall will be next:

http://www.avtt.org/index.htm

Be sure to check out their blog, complete with pictures from the weekend in Schaumburg:

http://avttorg.blogspot.com/

For information and pictures from this weekend in Schaumburg:

http://www.costoffreedomtribute08.org/

Went home this weekend (May 11) for the sole purpose of doing some genealogy legwork.  I had 6 cemeteries + 1 public library I wanted to visit and do some research in.  Saturday morning I was up and out the door before 7am.  The dew was so thick on the grass while I was at the 2nd cemetery that my jeans were soaked through 6 inches from the bottom, JUST from walking around! I’d brought a blanket to use when I had to kneel down, but it didn’t do any good when I was standing. 6 hours later my pants were still soaked through.

I found a lot of information I didn’t have before, though. And the hunt is part of the fun. It was a drive-through trip and Grandma was mad I didn’t stop to see her. But at the same time she said she was glad, too, because she would’ve been asked to traipse through the cemeteries also!

ONe of the cemeteries was just beautiful, so peaceful. I love to walk the stones, read the names, wonder about their lives, mourn their early losses.  In the one family cemetery I can tell so many stories about the people buried there that I should write a book!

Dad and I were discussing the perfect transcription of a cemetery over the weekend; what we would put in it, etc.

• Directions, including GPS coordinates, on how to get to the cemetery
• A map of the cemetery
• Each entry would include a photo of the front & back of the stone; a complete transcription of the stone; a detail photo of any symbols or images on the stone; and a transcript of the sexton’s records on this entry; and the stone’s physical make up

And this would be availalbe online - searchable - as well as in print form that I would donate to the area genealogy libraries/societies.